For the Birds

Here are 2 examples of shots I took this past weekend. At the "Birds of Prey" shoot at the SWMCCC Summer Weekend of Photography.

SOFOBOMO 2010

I just recently finished and upload my 2010 SOFOBOMO PDF book project. If you are unfamiliar with is it's an annual event that gives participants a 30 day window to shoot, produce and upload a PDF phototbook. Here is a link to the project SOFOBOMO HomePage

This is my second year of participation. Here's a link to this year's effort 2010 and this is a link to my 2009 effort.

Check them out and let me know what you think. Also go to the project home page and check out some of the other books there.

Improvement

Not to long ago someone asked me what was the best way they could improve as photographer. I think that my answer caught them by surprise judging by the look on their face. I simply told them to go out and shoot.

In order to learn the craft of photography you do need to read, take a class or seminar, take part in workshops and utilize any educational opportunity you can. But it does no good to learn about something and not put it in to practice. The doing is where the greatest learning takes place. You learn from making mistakes and correcting them, but you need to participate in order for that to happen.

Why Argue?

For some reason photographers like to argue.
And some of the things they argue seem mighty silly to me.
Here are some examples of exactly what I mean.



6 Things Photographers Like to argue about

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Playing around in the studio shooting smoke yesterday.

Urban Explorations

Last Sunday I went to Gary Indiana with a group of Flickr photographers to do a bit of Urban Exploring. Brian the guy who set up the outing brought along some lights and two nice young ladies to model for the group.
We started out in a old abandoned church and after a while a group of us went a few blocks away to an abandoned bolt factory and did some shooting there.
I was a good time and I am sure a lot of good images were made.

7 Things Photographers Should Never Do

http://www.lightstalking.com/7-things-photographers-should-never-do

This is very interesting. I especially like the last don't in the list.

The Outhouse 500

For the last few years I have been working on an adhoc project of sorts. I get a real kick out of photographing events like this that are put on by some of the smaller communities in the area.

I'm trying to figure out what to do with the shots I have made. I have a lot of very nice images that I should put together in some form that I can show people. Maybe it's time to do a book.

These events whether single day or multiple day affairs are great to photograph because they are so accessible. In most cases you can get very close to the action and generally no one gives you any problems about being there.

If you like to photograph people these types of events are perfect for it.

These images are from "The Outhouse 500" in Coopersville MI a small town a few mile west of where I live. I have wanted to shoot there for a couple of years now but something always came up that prevented me from going. So I made the effort to go this year and I'm glad I did.

It was a hoot.

2010 Jammie Awards

My oldest daughter invited me to go see the Jammie Awards with her last night. She knew a couple of the people playing. There were a number of bands and solo artists who performed small sets over the course of the evening on two different stages.

For those who don't know what the Jammies are I'll explain. WYCE is a local community supported radio station in Grand Rapids Michigan and for the past 11 years the have given awards to local musical talent at this special awards show.



Here are a few of the shots I made.

Playing Can Be Creative

The other night I went to the studio of a friend of mine. We are putting on a lighting workshop for a couple of local area camera clubs and we needed figure out what we were going to cover, lighting setups, as well as some other details.

Larry rounded up a couple of models to work with. It was a great time because we got to play with all kinds of lighting arrangements we wanted to try and to figure out what would work out the best at the workshop. If we wanted to try something to see how it looked we could.

We did a lot of "what if we put a light here" or "what about a blue or red gel on the background light" kind of things. It was very refreshing to just mess around with light without the constants of shooting for a client's needs.

We got to play.